Airbnb Community Center Highlights - 2019

[Laura_C]

Can you believe it’s the end of 2019 already? I wanted to spend a moment to share reflections with you all on the year that we’ve had, and to wish you all a very wonderful holiday season. 

I’ll start by sharing some things I’ve been particularly excited about, including improvements we’ve made this year both here on the Community Center and more broadly for hosts across the world. Then I’d love for all of you to jump into the comments and tell us about your personal hosting highlights from 2019 (and share thoughts on how we can continue to support you in 2020 and beyond!)

Listening to you … and creating positive change

Listening continues to be a priority for me personally, and our broader team at Airbnb. It’s been ~16 months since I joined the company. Spending time with you all has really helped me learn about your priorities, and gather stories and insights to share across the company. It has also been an absolutely delightful experience to get to know you! I spend several hours each week engaging with host feedback—here on the Community Center, via email, and other online and offline forums. I’ve particularly enjoyed traveling around to meet many hosts in their hometowns around the world, and learning about the similarities (and some of the unique differences) in your experiences. You can review some of my learnings from our Listening Tour here with @Lizzie, my amazing travel companion! 

We also continued our Global Q&A series where we answer the top questions from hosts—this year, we tackled some big topics like Reviews, Guest Standards, and customer support. 

These are often complex and nuanced topics. But thanks to your feedback, we’re making progress in addressing the areas that are highlighted on a regular basis here in the Community Center. Our work has only just begun—this is a journey, and I know we have lots more to do, but please know that my team and I (along with the broader Airbnb family) are committed to ensuring that our fabulous hosts have everything they need to be successful, feel protected, and make meaningful connections with each other.  

Better ways to connect with each other

Here on the Community Center, we heard that you wanted to be able to tag and find other hosts more easily as it was difficult to sort through 500 profiles with @David, so we launched Unique Usernames! Thank you all for your patience (and humor) as we worked through some of the challenges. 🙂 

Before:

After:

Also—we have a global community, and we want the Community Center to reflect that by supporting the languages you speak. This year, Dutch was in high demand, so we relaunched these two communities with great support from @Quincy . If you speak any of these languages, check it out and meet some of our wonderful global hosts!

We also added the Airbnb Updates section in Greek, Croatian, and Russian. Drop a comment below with any additional languages you’d like to see!

More educational content and updates from Airbnb

Earlier this year, we launched Airbnb Updates, a place for hosts to keep up to date with company news, announcements, product updates, hosting tips, and other important information related to Airbnb. We know it is particularly important for you to be aware of what’s going on, and we appreciate that you want this information as soon as possible. We will continue working on sharing more information on a regular basis, particularly on company updates, product developments, and progress on fixing any site bugs.

We also launched the How to Host series, featuring a few of our Superhosts on some key hosting topics. There are many great tips from how to host a private room to how to make your home a social media star. I highly recommend you check it out if you haven’t already!

Making the world a smaller place

Since joining Airbnb, I have been most excited to connect with our hosts all around the world—and what better way to do that than through the Community Center? It’s been great to meet many of you here! The passion, the stories, the honest and direct feedback, and thoughtfulness from you energizes me to come in every day and help build (or improve) the things that are incredibly important to you. 

One of my favorite events this year was the Festival of Hospitality. I was so impressed with the content and loved the “I love hosting because….” video (sorry again for not following the formatting rules!!!). Thanks again to everyone who was involved. We’d love to do this again next year. What should our video be about this time?

For those who missed it, check it out below! 

Now, let’s end on some fun stats on the Community Center!

• This year we hit 1 million posts!! 
• We had 247K users join the Community Center across 214 countries!
• @Sarah977 created the most posts in 2019 … at 5,796 posts! (Wow!)
• @Sarah977 received the most kudos in 2019 … at 12,344 kudos!
• @Andrea-and-Francis0 gave the most kudos in 2019 at 9,054 kudos!
• Laura and Lizzie spent a total of 126 hours on flights during the Listening Tour!
• The most popular name in the Community Center is Maria. 

Thanks again to everyone who helped us make the Airbnb Community what it is today. As hosts, you are helping guests feel like they can belong anywhere when they travel, and I look forward to continuing our dialogue on how we can better support you on the things that matter most to you. 

Finally, on behalf of all of us, I wanted to extend an extra special thanks to the amazing team of Community Managers for making the Community Center a warm place for our community to join. It’s wonderful to see the friendships you have all developed. @Lizzie @Quincy @Anna @Kirstie @Emilie  @Sergi @May  @Francesca  @Noriko @Stephanie —thank you!

Everyone—have a spectacular holiday season, and I’ll see you in the new year!

~Laura

[Helen427]

Thanks @Laura_C  and Zoe to for all your behind the scenes contributions.

Imagine if we didn't have the internet at all to communicate when things take a twist and throw us challenges?

Some parts of the world they still don't have the internet and rely on good ole fashioned Bush Telegraph, hand written letters and landlines - we must always remember those people to.

Where would we be without you all @Laura_C @Lizzie @Stephanie @Noriko@Quincy @Francesca @Anna @Sergi @Kirstie @Emilie @May 

Best wishes for the Christmas /New Years and I'm sure some of you will be here in CC keeping an eye on things over that period between your family and other commitments.

[Mike-And-Helen0]

@Laura_C @Helen427 Happy Christmas when it comes.

After an extremely quiet September/October/November we have our last guests of 2019, a couple from New Zealand.

[Helen427]

@Mike-And-Helen0 

Say hello to your New Zealand Guests and make sure they behave!
All the best to you al on the farm - I'm sure you will give your horses a few carrots 🙂

[Susan17]

Wow. Just wow. Airbnb appears to have a very different perspective on the Community Centre, and on the "exciting improvements" introduced this year, than the overwhelming majority of hosts posting on this forum (apart from starry-eyed newbies those who post gushing tributes in the cult-like "Welcoming All Superhosts" thread, of course)

While I wholeheartedly agree that the mods do a heroic job - in extremely difficult circumstances - the Community Centre basically amounts to the worst, most damaging PR any company could possibly ever draw on  itself. In fact, it's astounding to me that they continue to drive traffic here to discover all the horror stories, of which most hosts are previously blissfully unaware.

We keep on being bombarded with the "We're listening" mantra, which is repeated ad nauseum, but Airbnb is obviously not reading , hearing or comprehending the thousands upon thousands of furious (unanswered)  posts that dominate the forum from armies of pissed off, disgusted and contemptuous hosts, if  they're labouring under the hilarious misconception that the Community Centre is something Airbnb should, or could, ever be proud of.

Surreal. Truly surreal.

[Stephanie]

Hiya @Susan17 ,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I think you have some valid points but have to disagree that the Community Center has a negative impact on the company. Surely, if we felt that way we would remove and censor the negativity, rather we keep it despite the implications as it is important to take both sides.

The Community Center team reads every single post that is shared here across each language - in some cases, an answer may not be seen as it is a sensitive issue where we will private message the user. 

It may feel like it's a negative forum but we do track the overall sentiment here and find much more positivity than negativity. But I can understand how negativity can feel stronger and it is a heavy emotive. 

We private message a lot more than with post - it's important for the CC users to see and hear from their peers in an organic and real way, and feel they can share freely (within the Guidelines!) We have many positive hosts here that do read the negative stories but continue to shine with their uplifting tales and personalities. 

Hope that helps,

Stephanie

[Rosemarie-and-Henry0]

Hi Everyone,

Airbnb has been delayed in paying me for 1 month now and giving me the run around.

If you click at the community center and search payout delay, you will see it's not only me.

Laura, please help us.

Disappointed ,

Henry Brodett